Notes on Coming Out

Last weekend, one of the topic of conversation among former classmates was the news of one of our batchmates coming out. Questions like, "How did he come out?" "Who did he come out to?" "Who's his boyfriend?", emerged. I shouldn't have been that excited with the news because since I've met him, I already knew we're playing on the same side, and the recent turnout was just confirmation of my ever so reliable gaydar. In our excitement, we tried to answer one of our questions, who is his current boyfriend. And to do so, we decided to visit his Facebook timeline. We remember seeing a coded status he posted months ago that seem to be saying something but very subtly. As we browse through his status, one commenter caught our attention. His comments were to bland or straightforward, lacking any emotion which seemed to be odd since all other comments were humorous. By instinct, I opened that guy's profile in a new tab and browsed through his timeline. One of his status last January 22 was just "6th." Too cryptic, I thought. This is one the techniques one does to announce something without being too loud. Only those who knows your secret will understand it. Of course, since its the oldest trick in a discreet gay guy's book, I knew what it meant. It was his 6th monthsary with his special someone. We counted backwards until when the count started which would make July as their zero month. We went back to our batchmate's profile and went straight to last July. No significant or striking status came up. However, one of his status in August kind of gave him up. His status was "22" on August 22. In the comments, our person of interest, the previous commenter, left a comment "22nd street." Trying to cover up eh, I thought. And another comment was "happy, happy" which obviously a congratulatory message. Voila! So we concluded from deductive reasoning that we finally found our batchmate's boyfriend. 

So what did I learn from this experience?

• If you're really trying to be discreet about your sexuality and your relationship with another man, don't leave any cryptic status. Your friends weren't born yesterday.
• If you're planning to come out do so as if it's not a big deal. It's also best to be done when you have a partner, and introduce him as casual as possible. Your friends will be like, "oh, I see. Nice." Remember, if it's not a big deal for you, it's not for them.
• "Partner" is already dated. Most discreet gay guys use the terms "roommates / pad mates", "bestfriend / best bud."
• Denial also has its benefits. If you keep denying your sexuality, even though everybody knows you're not straight, there would come a time that once you really come out, people will be like, "whatever, we already knew that."
• Don't be too enthusiastic in convincing others that someone is gay because remember what they say "it takes one to know one."